Tuesday, 17 December 2013

I'm turning Guardianese .. I really think so

OK, try this:-"Jantjie's performance was not meaningless – precisely because it delivered no particular meaning (the gestures were meaningless), it directly rendered meaning as such – the pretence of meaning."Jantjie was the chap doing the sign language at the Mandelafest. It's emerging now that his skills lean more towards killing people by hanging petrol-filled burning tyres around their necks, but that's by the way. The sentence above is fromSlavoj Žižek's comment piece in the Guardian today. The peculiar thing is, I know what he's saying.

There's an asian corner shop down the road that's installed a short concrete wheelchair ramp from the 6" high doorstep. The trouble is, it's only 14" wide - too narrow to be of any practical use whatsoever. Just as the gorget was the remnant of a shrunken ceremonial breastplate, so this ramp lays claim to the heritage of disabled access without actually providing it. Slavoj is hypothecating that the SA authorities were doing the same - it didn't matter that the sign language wasn't real, it was the gesture of having a signer that was important.

It's an interesting theory. We could scrap IDS' welfare system entirely and rely on the Sovereign's distribution of the Maundy purses to symbolise our commitment to welfare benefits, do away with the NHS and distribute healing crystals instead to symbolise our commitment to healthcare and send a single Beefeater in full ceremonial fig to Cameron's next war. Or perhaps not.

9 comments:

I think we're already there. I think we have been at that point for quite some years, possibly decades, when it comes to the principle that Žižek eludes to. Just look at the evidence:

Schools that don't educate.Hospitals that don't cure.Wars that are never won.IT programs that never work.Localism that never was.Immigration control that doesn't.Border control that isn't.Best practice procurement that isn't.Democracy that is anything but.

When put in these terms, it all seems like a mirage, or possibly a man with his hands wiggling in the air, indicating to us that all is working as it should.

Schools that don't educate. [hamstrung by having to teach by equality rather than ability]Hospitals that don't cure. [hamstrung by administrative inability and incompetence]Wars that are never won. [hamstrung by lack of adequate equipment and administrative incompetence]IT programs that never work. [hamstrung by being led by people who think hi-tech is an abacus]Localism that never was. [hamstrung by nationalistic control-freaks]Immigration control that doesn't. [hamstrung by the EU open-borders policy]Border control that isn't. [see above]Best practice procurement that isn't. [see all above]Democracy that is anything but.

Now, if we just change DEMOCRATS and REPUBLICANS to LABOUR and CONSERVATIVES:

¨Over the past several years, both the Democrats and the Republicans have proven again and again that they are basically completely and totally useless. In fact, just about everything that they try to do actually makes our problems even worse¨

Well Mandelson said it - and no matter what you may think of him he is a very well connected individual - this is the post-democratic age. Indeed, the evidence is all around us now.

Throughout the 90's a consensus was established amongst the Western elites whereby the world would now move through an epoch dominated by collectivist activity. Where before there were nations there would now be blocks of dissolved nations forming groups, which in turn will form bigger groups. Eventually just one group will remain and that group will establish a One World Government.

It's a process, forget the names just look for evidence of the process.

What you think is right may not be what I think is right. Indeed neither of us may be right. And what can we measure "right" against anyway? - a mutually agreed definition? - see the first sentence of this paragraph, ad infinitum.

So we cross the line of despair (Francis Schaeffer) and enter the grounds of nihilism and chaos. Only appearances count now, to pander to the animal emotion of belonging.